Desert biomes can be created and expanded using a Sandy Terraformer, and a planet will convert to a Desert planet once half of the planet's surface has been terraformed into Desert biome.

Desert planets can be found orbiting gentle (white), temperate (orange) and radioactive (yellow) star types. They also have a rare chance to be found around frozen (blue) stars as satellites of gas giants. There are no environmental hazards in desert biomes which require use of an environmental protection pack.

Possible mini biomes inside deserts are oasis, tar, colourful, and bones. In addition to wood gathered from trees, deserts have cacti which can be harvested and replanted which produce cactus.

Sub Biomes

There are sub biomes which can be found on desert planets in addition to their unique mini biomes. Barren or savannah have a chance to appear as smaller biomes on desert planets. These biomes will include things like their associated blocks, trees, and crops when they appear. Mini biomes for each of these secondary biome types can appear inside them as well.

Deserts can also be found on a number of different planet types as sub biomes. They have a chance to be found as sub biomes on savannah, midnight, and volcanic planets.

Mini Biomes

Oasis, tar, colourful, and bones are mini biomes found inside desert biomes. These mini biomes can be found on desert planets or inside desert sub biomes on other planet types. These mini biomes each have their own creatures and items outside what's available in desert biomes.

Wildlife

In addition to procedurally generated creatures, there are a variety of unique monsters, bugs and critters found in desert biomes. Some of these are also found in other biomes, while others are unique only to desert biomes. While these unique creatures have a chance to appear on desert planets, they will not all appear on each one. In addition to unique creatures, each biome has multiple types of both procedural ground and flying creatures.

Unique monsters each have combat attacks, and they must first be weakened before capture. Once weakened players can attempt to capture using a capture pod. If successful they can then be released to battle alongside and follow the player.

Critters are smaller non-combat unique creatures which are not capturable using capture pods. They can be captured without weakening them first by using a relocator gun. After releasing a critter from the relocator it will stay in the area it was released into.

Bugs are very small unique creatures which can be captured using a bug net, and are then stored inside placeable jars. Bugs which are captured using a relocator will fly after release instead of being kept inside a jar.

Unique Drops

There are a variety of items which are specific to Pod Chests and Old Chests found in desert biomes. Some of these may have a chance to be found in other places throughout the universe, but they've all been specifically allocated to chests within desert biomes.

Settlements

Deserts can have a large variety of settlement types found on them. These include small microdungeons and NPC camps, larger racial villages and hostile dungeons. Smaller desert planets usually contain only one dungeon or village, while larger desert planets can contain as many as three.